"Tastes like Sun Chips." "No after-taste." "Yea, I'll have more." Those were the reactions this afternoon as I bravely made my colleagues eat silkworm chips before I dared to try them myself. The occasion was a courier'ed bag of bug snacks I requested from Bugsolutely, a company founded in 2017 that just released their first product for the China market this month: Bella Pupa, silkworm snacks available in Original and Angry Sichuan flavors.

The problem, according to the company, is that China is now the world's largest meat consumer and importer. That causes problems. But with China's annual production of 500,000 TONS of silkworms, founder Massimo Reverberi says, "the solution is at hand." Welcome to the future, when we have run out of land for large mammals, and will derive our protein from bugs. Delicious!

Reverberi hopes to be part of China's 600 billion rmb snack market in 2019, with his silkworm chips (20% silkworm, actually). He's got the favored government jargon down, calling his production part of a circular economy, in which silkworms that are raised on mulberry leaves for the silk industry are then turned into the de-fatted silkworm powder. Most interestingly, Reverberi, whose Bugsolutely business is split between Thailand (where he also sells cricket pasta, not quite legal in China yet) and China, will be speaking at an event on this Friday morning at naked Hub, about the need for insect protein and what his company is doing about it. If Sun Chips and sustainability are your thing, and a little insect in your afternoon snack doesn't faze you, this one is for you.

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